Danone has opened a new €26m packing plant in Wexford as the final part of a €180m investment in Ireland over the last four years. The company is increasing capacity to meet growing demand for high-quality infant and toddler milks in Europe and Asia.

Last year, Danone was supplied with the equivalent of about 1.2bn litres, or about a quarter of the Irish milk pool, from processors which include Dairygold, Tipperary Co-op, Lakeland, Kerry and Glanbia.

Macroom is home to Danone’s largest single dryer in the world with a capacity of 135,000 tonnes/annum and it is expected to produce 126,000t this year.

Its Wexford packing plant is now the biggest in the early life nutrition division.

Asia is becoming an important market for Danone and they shipped around 20,000t from Ireland to Asia last year. Danone envisages to export 15,000t of Irish dairy products to China alone by 2020.

Danone is the second-largest player in early life nutrition in the world and last year it produced 700,000t.

Early life nutrition had sales of €4.3bn in 2013 and growth of 3.6%. 84% of this relates to infant formula.